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Google's use of Brits' medical records to train an AI and treat people was legally "inappropriate," says Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian at the UK's Department of Health.
In April 2016 it was revealed the web giant had signed a deal with the Royal Free Hospital in London to build an artificially intelligent application called Streams, which would analyze patients' records and identify those who had acute kidney damage.
As part of the agreement, the hospital handed over 1.6 million sets of NHS medical files to DeepMind, Google's highly secretive machine-learning nerve center. However, not every patient was aware that their data was being given to Google to train the Streams AI model. And the software was supposed to be used only as a trial – an experiment with software-driven diagnosis – yet it was ultimately used to detect kidney injuries in people and alert clinicians that they needed treatment.
Dame Caldicott has told the hospital's medical director Professor Stephen Powis that he overstepped the mark: it's one thing to create and test an application, it's another thing entirely to use in-development code to treat people. Proper safety trials must be carried out for medical systems, she said.
We are going to see many more stories like this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:24AM (2 children)
The answer is to always lie to the government and perform Bayesian poisoning. Google should never be allowed access to such vast amounts of personal data, and they can't ever demonstrate that they could be trusted with it.
You can't trust the government either, since I didn't see them take a fucking vote to ask the Brits if they wanted to turn over highly sensitive medical data to a 3rd party American company that specializes in selling access to data to other 3rd parties.
This was an absolutely huge and flagrant violation of the Hippocratic Oath which only illustrates in sharp relief what happens when people who don't respect the Hippocratic Oath are allowed access to medical data. If that fuckwit that made this decision had read it, then perhaps, just perhaps, over 1 million Brits wouldn't be laid naked in front of Google.
Somebody needs to be sacked, and then prosecuted.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tonyPick on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:15AM (1 child)
That's a viable strategy for Facebook or webapp of the week. For medical data, where your health might rely ion it being correct, or maybe a Tax Return or Census form, where you're legally required to fill out things correctly, then this is not a viable strategy.
Which is why there are laws about this, and why people responsible at Google and the hospital in question should be going to Jail for a very long time to stomp on this kind of abuse hard.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 17 2017, @10:00PM
No, it's the only viable strategy for life. Regardless of the law, there is an information war in progress. Information Asymmetry is rampant, and the Actors involved have wildly divergent levels of power. All information that leaves you must be considered beforehand, and almost all information that leaves you is purely used against you by the aforementioned Actors.
Even though you may have no power, if they have no information about you, you do in fact have some power and safety. If they have false information about you, that is even better. They must use their resources to use and vet false data, and that time is something that is also valuable for you, since you can be moving around and emitting even more false data.
It gets much better when weak Actors cooperate together and emit both false and true information. Other weak actors would have the ability to determine truth from false, but other more powerful Actors would lack the information to do so, and it would be more difficult requiring greater expenditure of resources.
Legally required? Bwhhahahahah. They can kiss my nuts. What is legal and not legal is often determined solely by the more powerful Actors to the disadvantage of the weaker ones. In other words, I practice civil disobedience at all times. Yes, I lie habitually as a defense mechanism against the government and corporations. However, I do let the census at least know as much information as my voter registration. Which is a cross street within 5-10 miles of where I sleep. I essentially tell the government that I'm homeless, as I will never let them know where I sleep.
I decide what laws I follow, consequences be damned. Otherwise, you've given into fear and enabled totalitarianism to flourish. That I believe is what it means to be a free American. Fuck the suits making their own laws with their corrupt puppets in government. Good laws that make sense, and are obviously for the common good, I follow. Laws that are clearly protectionist in nature designed solely to increase the wealth of the rich? I wipe my ass with them.
As for the medical, I found a doctor willing to keep nearly everything out of the records. They understand that the only way I will receive medical care is if I have privacy, or I will receive no medical care beyond the emergency room where I can lie about my identity. They reviewed my current medical records in front of me since I brought the binders with me, and the doctor returned all of my records without making a copy. All I have is their word for it, but I'm trusting that a doctor will follow the Hippocratic Oath first, and then the laws of the land second. I also only ever speak to the doctor, or the nurses that assist them. Never to the parasites administering the bureaucracy of it all, as they don't know what the Hippocratic Oath is when you ask. That's the litmus test; Do you know the Hippocratic Oath and will you take it for me?
You mean like laws against contributing to the death of 29 people because of gross negligence? Laws are not applied equally, and the stronger the law, with the more powerful the actor, and the greater the consequences, the less the law is enforced, and the weaker the consequences will be. That is our justice system. So no, you will never find justice and protection within the law.
I agree, they should be going to jail for a long time. Just like the bankers that were laundering billions for the drug lords that were determined to be too-important-to-jail. The U.S DOJ literally said that these bankers were too important to the overall process and therefore were not going to meet any consequences. If you were a U.S citizen, you might be a little bit pissed that these Ivy league douchenozzles receive no consequences, but a homeless black man hungry for a hamburger can get 15 years in prison for going crazy and cooking his own burger in a closed burger joint he broke into. He was even remorseful about it, and still got 15 years from some hard ass judge getting kickbacks for increasing for-profit prison system revenue.
Sorry, but wake up. There is an information war around you, and nobody is playing fair according to the law. Your only defense is to manipulate the information flow to the best of your ability.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.